Brexit discussion thread IV

An Ciarraioch

An interesting article on WTO border rules:

https://tradebetablog.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/does-the-wto-require-countries-to-control-their-borders/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

An Ciarraioch

RoI economy grows by 9% in Q1, NI economy declines by 1% YOY:

https://www.ft.com/content/b56f915c-8b3b-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-northern-ireland-44883612?__twitter_impression=true

BonnieSituation

ambro25 wrote: »

Feeling for you, there.

We were sale agreed for our UK house since late January, but the sale didn’t complete and money didn’t change hands until late May due to chain on buyer’s side (we had to leave U.K. mid-February).

Then it took bloody days & weeks to sort out expatriation of £ proceeds (form-based as well), and days longer still to sort out F/X into € and a local investment vessel after all the KYC and AML hoops...All along I’m checking the €/£ rate, this thread and the news, and sweating cobs!

Not relevant if you are (and staying, and/or buying/reinvesting) in the U.K., but if you’re not, I’d try and get the £ proceeds PDQ in case the £ takes another 20% (or more) in the teeth...or Corbyn gets in and has McDonnell slap capital controls on early.

Yeah there's been a couple of cold feet offers over the last few months but thankfully the current offer is more realistic. It's a local who had previously had her eye on the house when it was bought by my GF. So she's really eager to take it. Plus she's not encumbered by family and kid considerations and is relatively wealthy. So these are things in our favour. What's not in our favour is the loons in Westminster.

New lawyers and estate agents have been sought and booked after the last guys turned out to be absolute shysters.

Re the proceeds from the sale; thankfully her ex-partner is still living in the property and is available for dealing with any "on the ground" business while she's ensconced in Dublin but as soon as all is closed every goddam cent is getting moved straight to Ireland or Switzerland ha ha. (assuming it doesn't turn into Zimbabwe in the meantime)


Any tips as to how to do that would be welcome.

Leonard Hofstadter

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Yeah there's been a couple of cold feet offers over the last few months but thankfully the current offer is more realistic. It's a local who had previously had her eye on the house when it was bought by my GF. So she's really eager to take it. Plus she's not encumbered by family and kid considerations and is relatively wealthy. So these are things in our favour. What's not in our favour is the loons in Westminster.

New lawyers and estate agents have been sought and booked after the last guys turned out to be absolute shysters.

Re the proceeds from the sale; thankfully her ex-partner is still living in the property and is available for dealing with any "on the ground" business while she's ensconced in Dublin but as soon as all is closed every goddam cent is getting moved straight to Ireland or Switzerland ha ha. (assuming it doesn't turn into Zimbabwe in the meantime)


Any tips as to how to do that would be welcome.

I use Transferwise to do any transfers between my Irish and UK bank accounts. Any time I checked I found them to be the cheapest, and the money usually arrives in a day when it's GBP to EUR, for some reason EUR to GBP takes only minutes.

I recently moved all my sterling money into my Irish account, I had planned on leaving there for a while as I'm fortunate enough to not need the money right now, so I was hoping that there would be a trade deal with the EU and hence the value of GBP would go up, but in the short to medium term I can only see sterling losing even more value in terms of Euro or any other currency, I think it's more likely at this stage there will be no deal, and anyway, even if there is a trade deal, it will be totally inferior to the current terms and conditions the UK enjoys with the EU, so the value of sterling will never go back to the levels it was previously at unless the UK was to re-join the EU and single market.

Zubeneschamali

Ha ha!

I see some financial news sites have stopped calling it a "No Deal" brexit and started calling it "No Idea" brexit:

Pound Eyes Fresh 2018 Lows vs. the Euro as Markets Brace for a 'No Idea' Brexit & a Possible Leadership Challenge to P.M. May

flatty

Why would the eu entertain the same shower of utter w@nkers currently running the UK if they come crawling back, after all they've said. I wouldn't be rushing to. I think they need to leave the UK to suffer in the short to medium term and only negotiate with a new generation. And I live in the UK sadly.

LeinsterDub

I've brexit infighting fatigue at this stage. If your interested follow the updates about the whip scandal

BonnieSituation

LeinsterDub wrote: »

I've brexit infighting fatigue at this stage. If your interested follow the updates about the whip scandal

It would be amazing if it was the whip-breaking that brings them down. I've not read anything since this morning but it's coming in thick and fast this evening.

:eek:

BonnieSituation

captainspeed wrote: »

I use Transferwise to do any transfers between my Irish and UK bank accounts. Any time I checked I found them to be the cheapest, and the money usually arrives in a day when it's GBP to EUR, for some reason EUR to GBP takes only minutes.

I recently moved all my sterling money into my Irish account, I had planned on leaving there for a while as I'm fortunate enough to not need the money right now, so I was hoping that there would be a trade deal with the EU and hence the value of GBP would go up, but in the short to medium term I can only see sterling losing even more value in terms of Euro or any other currency, I think it's more likely at this stage there will be no deal, and anyway, even if there is a trade deal, it will be totally inferior to the current terms and conditions the UK enjoys with the EU, so the value of sterling will never go back to the levels it was previously at unless the UK was to re-join the EU and single market.

Thanks a million. There's gonna be a fair few quid to be transferred alright so that actually seems decent tbh.

Having taken your advice on board I went to have a look and only cottoned the amount that GBP has dropped since the weekend. FUPP!

Strazdas

flatty wrote: »

Why would the eu entertain the same shower of utter w@nkers currently running the UK if they come crawling back, after all they've said. I wouldn't be rushing to. I think they need to leave the UK to suffer in the short to medium term and only negotiate with a new generation. And I live in the UK sadly.

It's a good question. You would still the same crowd running the country and about 10-15m right wing English nationalist loons who hate the EU. I would be a bit worried going forward that the whole thing would simply kick off again very soon.

BonnieSituation

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Yet another positive the EU brought along, faster bank transfers, but then the UK have their own anyways and didn't participate in SEPA

But what exactly have the EU done for us?

---

It's mad to think how quickly SEPA and IBANs became so ubiquitous for most people so quickly.

I remember years ago asking for an IBAN and having that glazed look face me in response.

AlmightyCushion

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Yet another positive the EU brought along, faster bank transfers, but then the UK have their own anyways and didn't participate in SEPA

They did.

EdgeCase

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

They did.

Only the international aspects of it. UK retail banks don't generally support SEPA for direct debits and so on. (A few of the more specialist internationally focused ones do.) Only Eurozone countries were initially required to implement the full range of SEPA facilities. The UK banks largely just use it as an international payments gateway and use BACS / CHAPS (their domestic system) internally.

The difference in Eurozone countries is SEPA and the newer real time extension of it called "STC Inst" has completely replaced domestic clearing systems for electronic transactions. The Irish Retail Electronic Payments Clearing Company Ltd. (IRECC) shut down in late 2014 as it was no longer needed.

The only bit of our system that is entirely domestic is paper clearing i.e. cheques, as they were not intended to be carried forward into SEPA, although I am not really seeing how they're going to be 100% replaced in this market anytime soon, despite the push by the industry, there's still some role for paper instruments.

I deal with UK companies who still make a huge song and dance about international payments and keep wanting me to use BACS and wondering why I can't and so on...

The best one I ever had from a UK company was I was offered three prices : "British Pounds" "Irish Euro" or "German Euro". So, I asked for the price in all three and "German Euro" was cheapest, so I just offered to pay in that and was duly invoiced in Euro with UK VAT. Seems the Irish Euro was just a price gouge as we are obviously silly enough to pay more than the German customers did.

It's very easy to forget that the UK's often off in its own bubble entirely.

flutered

Strazdas wrote: »

It's a good question. You would still the same crowd running the country and about 10-15m right wing English nationalist loons who hate the EU. I would be a bit worried going forward that the whole thing would simply kick off again very soon.

it seems the uk police are been briefed on how to deal with an expected upsurge in hate crime come next march

An Ciarraioch

Barnier insists the Border must be sorted by October - not sure if even Leo regards that deadline as realistic at this point, though:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/19/no-deal-brexit-eu-warns-citizens-prepare-for-worst

EdgeCase

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Barnier insists the Border must be sorted by October - not sure if even Leo regards that deadline as realistic at this point, though:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/19/no-deal-brexit-eu-warns-citizens-prepare-for-worst

I suspect that will be an utter fiasco. It's almost the perfect storm in some ways. The Northern Ireland assembly is mothballed, the DUP have the British Government over a barrel and will not budge on anything and are the only political voice for the region despite having barely more than 28.1% of the support in the assembly and 36.0% of the popular vote in Westminster elections.

Meanwhile, the Tories don't care about anything other their own internal party fights and a high % of the UK electorate would probably struggle to find Northern Ireland on a map, but just get all jingoistic about it when pushed.

It's a bizarre set of circumstances and really can't lead to anything good. I get very, very concerned when I see a large part of the Northern Ireland community effectively going unrepresented in politics as these things have had a tendency to be expressed through non-political avenues when things get fraught.

BonnieSituation

EdgeCase wrote: »

I suspect that will be an utter fiasco. It's almost the perfect storm in some ways. The Northern Ireland assembly is mothballed, the DUP have the British Government over a barrel and will not budge on anything and are the only political voice for the region despite having barely more than 28.1% of the support in the assembly and 36.0% of the popular vote in Westminster elections.

Meanwhile, the Tories don't care about anything other their own internal party fights.

It's a bizarre set of circumstances and really can't lead to anything good. I get very, very concerned when I see a large part of the Northern Ireland community effectively going unrepresented in politics as these things have had a tendency to be expressed through non-political avenues when things get fraught.

Given we actually have historical evdence of this.

EdgeCase

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Given we actually have historical evdence of this.

Well, I think the only saving grace is the Irish Government is representing the nationalist community by proxy and the EU is very much playing devil's advocate in a good way to ensure that their rights are upheld.

If that wasn't happening, I would be very concerned about how this could pan out. Although, if they're completely ignored and it's a crash out, it's a case of being locked in with the mad aspect of the Brexiteers and right wing Tories... I can't see that going well.

It's shameful really when you think about the absolutely enormous work put into the Northern Ireland peace process by people including Tories like John Major and Labour politicians who took enormous political and even personal risks to push it through. Mo Mowlam in particular stands out as a shining example of the positive, open minded and genuinely good side of British politics.

What we are faced with at the moment is just pure toxicity. It's really awful to see how much the place has changed over a couple of decades, and very much for the worse.

BonnieSituation

EdgeCase wrote: »

Well, I think the only saving grace is the Irish Government is representing the nationalist community by proxy and the EU is very much playing devil's advocate in a good way to ensure that their rights are upheld.

If that wasn't happening, I would be very concerned about how this could pan out. Although, if they're completely ignored and it's a crash out, it's a case of being locked in with the mad aspect of the Brexiteers and right wing Tories... I can't see that going well.

I think they're aiming to represent everyone regardless of creed.

But yeah, you're right. It's like Varadakar is the anti-Lynch.

EdgeCase

BonnieSituation wrote: »

I think they're aiming to represent everyone regardless of creed.

But yeah, you're right. It's like Varadakar is the anti-Lynch.

Well, the DUP is simply not representing Northern Ireland's interests beyond a very narrow view of hardline unionism / loyalism. They're quite willing to sacrifice the economic and social future of the entire region for the sake of some abstract notion of British nationalism. Meanwhile, they're busily denying citizens basic rights that are available in the rest of the UK and being facilitated by a bunch of right wing morons in London who care nothing of Northern Ireland, but only about Brexit and power.

It's sad to see it unravel like this. I spent some time in my undergraduate days studying Northern Ireland's situation and met many of the parties on both (all) sides of the divide and there was a tremendous positivity and bridge building and a real hope for a long-term sane future. So much time, effort and energy was put into making things work up there and I have absolute respect for everyone involved. It took huge leaps of faith and willingness to trust the strength of the whole community up there and down here and also the British government.

All of that is being tossed aside by these narrow interests which are effectively just far-right English (and sort of some weird version of British) nationalism and extreme euroscepticism.

It seems that Ireland *always* gets screwed over by the large island to the right.

It's just depressing to see it. I mean even think of the huge effort put in by people from outside these islands like George Mitchell, both Clintons, John de Chastelain, at one stage even Nelson Mandella helped and in the background all the time was the EU and its notions of peaceful, pragmatic, bridge building approaches to inter community relations and trade.

Dyr

EdgeCase wrote: »

Well, the DUP is simply not representing Northern Ireland's interests beyond a very narrow view of hardline unionism / loyalism. They're quite willing to sacrifice the economic and social future of the entire region for the sake of some abstract notion of British nationalism. .

Welcome to the history of Northern Ireland 1921-1974, and now that Unionists think they have the whip hand they will do the same once more.

EdgeCase

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Sinn Fein ain't representing them either, if they bothered to show up and voted the other day in Westminster things for this island would be better!

I agree, but realistically speaking, it isn't going to happen as they have had a policy of abstentionism for the best part of a century.

The lack of a Northern Assembly however it an utter disgrace and *all* parties should be making a hell of a lot more noise about that and getting it up and running. It's insane and highly dangerous to have that power vacuum and they should all know better.

What really disappoints me is how passive and dysfunctional Labour has been. It was a huge legacy of their party to have been a fundamental part of the foundation of the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Frankly the current naval-gazing lot running it seem to not really give a damn about the place. You'd really never think this was the same party that once had Mo Mowlam and similarly minded people at its core. They should be really embarrassed.

Leonard Hofstadter

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

They did.

I thought they have their own UK only bacs/fasterpayments (http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/) system, tho banks can also interface with SEPA, that is what I meant

UK Bank transfers are instant, none of this nonsense like in Ireland where if you're with AIB and you want to transfer to a non AIB account it must be done before 2 pm if you want the recipient to get it on the same business day.

EdgeCase

captainspeed wrote: »

UK Bank transfers are instant, none of this nonsense like in Ireland where if you're with AIB and you want to transfer to a non AIB account it must be done before 2 pm if you want the recipient to get it on the same business day.

That's down to the Irish banks. SEPA has a full realtime extension and it's used elsewhere in Europe. Our major retail banks are generally pretty foot dragging on technology and always have been. Nothing to do with Brexit though or SEPA. An STC Inst transaction completes in ~10 seconds.

- I don't want to drag the thread off topic on a technicality, but if you want to talk about Irish transactional system issues - they are very much domestically originated by an cozy little oligopoly who only innovate if dragged kicking and screaming. The opening of the banking market and the availability of innovative banks here from the continent is likely going to shake things up very rapidly over the next few years.

I would expect the Irish banks will start offering STC Inst, but only because they're dragged that direction by the ECB and competition from abroad. I noticed I was getting same day AIB to N26 (Germany) payments recently though in less than 3 hours.

On the plus side, at least it's not the US. Interbank transactions over there seem to go by carrier pigeon.

Also btw BACS transactional time is up to 3 days, CHAPS is same-day but it's not cheap. For example: https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/bacs-chaps-faster-payments/
A whopping £25 fee!

To the mod: I'm just underlining this point as I think it is important to point out that it is NOT an issue with SEPA or the EU, but rather with the Irish banking market itself.

Imreoir2

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Sinn Fein ain't representing them either, if they bothered to show up and voted the other day in Westminster things for all people on this whole island (and UK) would be better!

I'm not sure this is really a valid point. From an Irish point of view the only vote that really mattered, the one on the backstop, did not even go for a vote. If it had, it would not have been close.

Sure they could have defeated the UK government on not being consistent on their own white paper, but the white paper is fantisy land anyway, it matters to the UK, but it is fairly meaningless to us really. Add to that the reality that SF MPs in Westminster would probably make it harder for Tory rebels to go against the government.

flutered

seamus wrote: »

Sure. But it just stinks to high heaven when the "democracy" drum has been banged every time someone suggests that Britain doesn't have to leave. Completely hypocrisy. Democracy is great as long as the Tories get the outcome they want.
Look, never say never. There are still 8 months, and we saw in 2016 that a lot can change in 8 months.

On the current path laid out, a hard Brexit seems very likely, perhaps with some level of a transitional period or a stay of execution. The EU don't want this either, so if the UK go to the EU on 30th March 2019 with a good exit strategy, but saying they need more time, then the EU will likely vote unanimously to allow it.
If they ask for more time but can't prove it'll be used any more wisely than they've used the last two years, then it'll be denied.

the problem is how can it be proved thet it is going to be used wisely or not, i doubt if the eu will take the uks word in anything anymore

Imreoir2

flutered wrote: »

the problem is how can it be proved thet it is going to be used wisely or not, i doubt if the eu will take the uks word in anything anymore

We know the price, they have to sign up to the backstop in a legally enforceable treaty.

flutered

Infini wrote: »

The problem though is that the way the Brits are acting atm expecially that little troll mogg and that bufoon boris, they dont care how much damage is caused or how catastrophic the effects are. Makes me wonder if they're doing this for ulterior motives like short selling or profiteering since no politician who was serious about their jobs would let a clusterfeck of a situation intentionally come about that would leave an entire country worse off.

These fools will end up crashing their country out and the amount of treaties and such required would take a significant amount of time to correct. I honestly believe by September well know for for certain that a crash out brexit is all but certain and only the chance of a referendum on wether to actually drive the country off a cliff has a chance of undoing this mess. I don't think the EU can afford to wait until the last minute if the Brits are dead set on blowing themselves up they'll have to have serious plans ready to go months beforehand.

i believe the eu has penciled in a special meeting of ministers for november, in case of a disaster of one in september, so after that its very hardball

EdgeCase

Imreoir2 wrote: »

We know the price, they have to sign up to the backstop in a legally enforceable treaty.

Two problems with that:

1. The UK could just ignore the treaty and at worst it would cause a no-deal Brexit. That consequence is already there should Ireland or anyone else veto a Brexit deal. It would have repetitional damage, but beyond that, it isn't really a very meaningful thing. They are also refusing pointblank to accept ECJ jurisdiction so where would you even dispute it?

2. The UK government effectively has no parliamentary mandate to negotiate the dinner menu for the meeting, as can be seen by the chaos that's going on over there. The PM says one thing one minute and a few days later it's shot down and countermanded by the hardline Brexiteers.

Effectively the UK's word is meaningless.

The only way I can see this being resolved is a general election in the UK that gives someone a clear majority. Even if it were a clear majority for a pro-Brexit party, we could at least get something like clarity of purpose and get the Northern Ireland DUP issues out of the way.

BonnieSituation

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Sinn Fein ain't representing them either, if they bothered to show up and voted the other day in Westminster things for all people on this whole island (and UK) would be better!

How has it not sunk in yet that SF votes would have made no difference?

Can you imagine if they showed up, what then ya reckon would the people on "their side" of the vote have done with the optics of siding with "the IRA"?

It's beyond naive to think that it is in SF's gift to save the British from themselves.

As well as this, imagine the hit they'd receive at home for going against their declared abstentionism. They would be crucified, then what?

Their constituents voted for them on the basis of abstentionism; to go against that is to go against their constituents.

This idea needs to be put to bed.